EstE
by NagiLite
Summary: An account of Brad Crawford's life, from early childhood to beyond.
1. Introduction

I was sitting in the Chorus room when I came up with this (I like to imagine) brilliant idea. As far as I know, it never states in the series anything about Crawford's past, other than that he attended Rosenkreuz with Schuldich. So I decided to come up with my own version of what 'really' happened. Yeah, it's weird, but so am I.  
  
I had (as some of you might have guessed) a lot of inspiration from Steven King's novel, "Firestarter", which I strongly recommend anyone interested in stories about psychics read. I apologize to Mr. King for taking some of his ideas and making them my own. Most of the other ideas are mine. Rebecca and James Crawford belong to me (that's a first) as well as Alex Nine and other characters not portrayed in the series.  
  
However, Schwarz members, EstE, Weiß, and et cetera belong to Koyasu Takehito and Project Weiß.  
  
Be warned: there will be strong homosexual undertones and/or situations in the latter chapters. If you don't like that...And I think most Weiß fans do...Then don't read. I'm rating the story R throughout to prevent any innocent eyes that want to stay innocent from stumbling onto this unawares. I'm rather partial to lemons...so the rating may be upped as I see fit.  
  
The first few parts focus on Brad Crawford's parents, flipping back and forth from the present...to the past. Don't worry, Brad's in there, and he will obviously be the character most focused on throughout.  
  
Also, I probably should label this fic as 'Alternate Universe', just in case I get any hard facts mixed up as I'm prone to do.  
  
Sorry for the long introduction. This way, I don't have to label every single chapter. If you're comfortable with the material, then please, go forth!  
  
  
  
--NagiLite 


	2. A Beginning

~EstE: A Beginning~  
  
  
  
  
  
****present****  
  
A young woman slapped down a five-dollar bill on the counter. She didn't bother waiting for the cash register operator to come up with change--she darted out to her car with a bag of chips and a Diet soda in hand. As soon as she got in, she revved the engine and took off, nervous sweat causing her make-up to run.  
  
She was scared, damn, she was scared. The full impact of everything that had happened hadn't hit her yet, but she knew it would. Soon. Very soon. And would she be able to take that?  
  
The soft snores of the seven year old boy in the passenger seat drifted within her hearing. The knees of his jeans were dirty, and his black hair (the same color as his father's) was oily from lack of wash. There had been no time for baths in the past few days.  
  
Rebecca Crawford kept her hands firmly at ten and two 'o'clock as she sped down the Interstate.  
  
****eight years before****  
  
It had been a cool day in February that the experiment had taken place. James Crawford, in his Senior year of college, about to graduate sixty- sixth in a class of four hundred and twenty four, needed money. Badly. His financial situation was anything but good. He had been planning to go into his father's furniture business, but had abandoned that idea three years before in favor of architecture.  
  
His father had been decidedly opposed.  
  
"Fine, if you really want to abandon your family, that's fine by me," Gerald Crawford had said hotly.  
  
"Dad, I'm not 'abandoning' the family. I'm simply going into a new venture."  
  
"New venture my ass. Make your own money from now on."  
  
That had been the worst blow to James; without his father's money, he had to get a part-time job to pay his college tuition. He worked afternoons and Saturdays in a fast food restaurant on Seller Avenue. But free money was always welcome.  
  
His roommate, Bobby Dillan, had recommended James to the experiment.  
  
"It's really safe," he'd assured James, who had been writing an essay at the time. "Three hundred bucks just for taking a fucking survey and letting them test a harmless chemical on you..."  
  
"Then why aren't you doing it?"  
  
"I have a game that weekend," Bobby had replied. Bobby was a member of the campus soccer team. Triton University was really very remarkable, sports- wise; it had a basketball team that won every game and a soccer team that lost every game.  
  
James thought it was too good a deal to pass up. He filled out a registration form and was told to go to the science lab that Sunday.  
  
The receptionist at the desk outside the lab raised an eyebrow at James, popping her gum.  
  
"Kid. You even know what this is all about?"  
  
"No," he answered truthfully.  
  
The lady grinned and crossed her legs. He noted there was a run in her hose. "Guess you'll figure it out soon enough, eh?"  
  
He shrugged. He didn't particularly care what the experiment was for, as long as he got the three hundred bucks.  
  
The professor conducting the tests was tall, thin, with bushy eyebrows. His cold gaze unnerved James, who sat in a desk beside a pretty girl with bushy red hair. There were maybe sixty students crammed into the room, most of whom James didn't recognize. The girl with the red hair was anxiously tapping a pencil on the scratched wood of the desk.  
  
"They're going to stick us with needles," she said softly. "I hate needles..."  
  
"But you need the money, right?" James said. She nodded. He smiled. "Yeah, me too."  
  
The professor called for quiet. His name was Borgan or Barton or something like that. Assistants handed out paper with small printed words on them. Surveys. "Please use a number two pencil," the professor said.  
  
The questions were weird, but James answered them all. 'Have you ever had a psychic experience before...did you ever know about things before they happened...have you ever heard someone else's thoughts...well, not that I know of.' He answered no.  
  
The surveys were taken up and all of the students were dismissed. A week later, James received a letter asking him to return to the Lab. He thought of it as the Lab now, with a capital 'L'.  
  
Professor B. (James wasn't blessed with the gift to remember names) was standing calmly by the entrance in uniform white. The red-headed girl who he'd spoken to during the survey was there, too. She smiled at him and said, "Only a few of us passed. Me and you, too, I guess."  
  
She was cute, in her short skirt and blue sweater. He felt terribly self conscious, hoping she wouldn't notice the pimple on his forehead that he'd struggled to cover with his unruly black hair that morning. He hated acne. He let her go in ahead of him. She said her name was Rebecca Hamand. What was his?  
  
Abruptly, she clapped a hand to her mouth.  
  
"I'm James...James...Craw...ford..." He gaped in astonishment at the Lab. White, so much white. A man dressed in white (a GA, he assumed) clapped a hand on James' shoulder and led him to a narrow cot. 'Like a hospital...IVs and needles and people in white...'  
  
The students, all thirteen of them (fifteen including Rebecca Hamand and him) were laid out on other cots. The one James was situated on was hard against his spine and he shifted uncomfortably.  
  
Was all of this really worth three hundred dollars? 'No turning back, now...'  
  
Rebecca was next to him, her face as pale as the makeshift bed she was on, as pale as the coat of the man who loomed over her.  
  
Professor B. entered and came to a standstill in the center of it all. His smile was chilly. "Welcome. You are about to be injected with SIA, a completely harmless chemical, with effects much like the positive ones of recreational drugs.. You may hallucinate, see strange things. Do not be frightened. You are in a scientific environment, and perfectly safe."  
  
The GA hovering over James wrapped a rubber flex around the boy's upper arm and said, "Make a fist." A vein popped up clearly against James' tanned skin. The GA grinned frostily. He picked up a shot needle filled with a clear fluid.  
  
"This won't hurt a bit..."  
  
****present****  
  
She could see them. Men in gray suits, Lab men. How she longed for the charcoal pigment of their clothing to change to dove white! white was the color she associated with many things. The room where she'd been injected with SIA. Her dress on the day she'd married James Crawford. The emptiness in her mind when she wasn't using It. It could be very bad, especially now.  
  
There was a reason she always wore gloves. Powerful clairvoyants had to wear gloves, unless they wanted to pick up images from every object they touched.  
  
It. She sometimes hated It.  
  
White was, most of all, the color of the uniforms that the people of EstE wore. So far away. The EstE base was in Austria, right at the heart of its training facility, Rosenkreuz.  
  
She had no money, and the Lab men were after Rebecca and her son. 'Little Bradley,' she thought as she turned into a rest area, guzzling down the Diet Coke. 'We'll survive this. We'll find a way.'  
  
****eight years before****  
  
James felt...funny. Colors were bleeding into each other, and he thought he might be sick. So much...his thoughts wouldn't seem to focus. Hey, a table just floated across the room. And that was fine.  
  
He was hot, he was ohhhh, so hot. He asked for water but not with his lips and a voice answered in his head, calling, /James?/  
  
'Who are you? Why can I hear you?'  
  
/It's Rebecca...I'm so confused./  
  
'You're talking to me. But I'm looking right at you. Your lips are still.'  
  
/Yes. Strange. Look. That boy is weeping./  
  
James stared as a boy across the room rocked back and forth, clutching his head, crying. Why was he crying? Too hot in here.  
  
"James." Hands cool against his forehead. GA gazed down at him. Studied him. "I see. Professor. We have pyrokinesis over here."  
  
'Pyro-whatsit?' Something was growing in him, and he had to let it go, had to get rid of it. Thumping began in his head, behind his eyeballs.  
  
Professor B. The man was standing in a way that he blocked everything else.  
  
"Interesting. Bring me a match."  
  
'Hot...hot...hot...'  
  
The GA brought one, and the red stood out in James' mind's eye. The weeping boy's cries increased; someone screamed.  
  
Professor B. held the match before James, said, "Light this."  
  
James made a grab for the match, but it was pulled away.  
  
"No, no, no, with that heat INSIDE of you."  
  
'In...side?'  
  
So...hot...  
  
The match burst into flame. James watched it, trying to catch his mind up to what had occurred. Fire. It wasn't hot anymore.  
  
"Yes, definitely pyrokinesis. Be sure to have plenty of water at hand," and then Professor B. walked away. James grinned sleepily and slowly fell into unconsciousness... 


	3. Out of Hand

~EstE: Out of Hand~  
  
  
  
  
  
****present****  
  
They hadn't meant for things to get so out of hand, Rebecca mused, tucking her coat around the snoring form of her son. She and James hadn't realized...that they would never be allowed true freedom. That they would never have a normal life.  
  
Her gloved hands went to the ignition, turning on the vehicle and trying to think of a plan. None came to mind. She had to look on the bright side-- but there wasn't a bright side. Here she was, sneaking around outside a Rest Area. And she hadn't even been able to relieve herself. Well, life was tough.  
  
No plan.  
  
Except...  
  
They could simply hide for a while. And when she scrounged up enough money...Austria. EstE. And no more gray suited men.  
  
****eight years before****  
  
James awoke next with a blinding headache and a very scrambled brain. He was in the Lab. And there was Rebecca to his right. He remembered someone crying. There were only three other students asleep in the room.  
  
James grabbed the sleeve of a passing GA.  
  
"Hey, where is everybody?"  
  
"A few volunteers suffered from very minor stomach aches. They are being taken care of."  
  
'Stomach aches?'  
  
"I lit a match," James blurted out. "With my mind."  
  
"A hallucination," the man said before he wandered away. He came back moments later with an Aspirin and a glass of water. James was released that day.  
  
A week after, when James was nearly convinced he'd imagined the match and the voices in his head, he encountered Rebecca Hamand. (He would think back, years later, on that moment in time, and wonder if it had been fortunate or unfortunate. After all, he might have forgotten the experiment all together had she not appeared then.) They spoke of normal things at first, weather, grades, and finally the topic shifted to the Lab. Both had received their three hundred dollar checks.  
  
"But...something's been up with me ever since," Rebecca said. She was chewing on her bottom lip, and her face was contorted into a frown. "You may think I'm nuts for saying this. I...I have no one else who might even vaguely understand. Sometimes...I hear voices. Other people's voices. In my head. Very, very quiet voices, but they're there, and I wonder if I'm...losing my mind. The biggest thing is my hands, when I touch objects, especially old objects, I see things. Little boxes of knowledge in my brain. I learn about the pasts of things just by touching them." She shrugged and laughed uneasily, showing James her gloved hands.  
  
"I have to wear these, else it becomes too much."  
  
He told her about the match in the Lab and the amazing heat.  
  
"I think..." She paused thoughtfully. "I think there was more to the SIA-- the stuff they put in us--than what they let on."  
  
It took weeks of research and their own personal testing to discover exactly what had been done to them. Rebecca was quite computer literate, and she hacked into personal files and still more files to get the whole story.  
  
What they discovered changed their lives forever.  
  
****present****  
  
Rebecca Crawford drove all night and well into the next morning. By then Bradley had awoken and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.  
  
"Mommy, I'm hungry."  
  
She opened the bag of chips awkwardly and handed it to him. Not the most nutritional breakfast, she knew, but she didn't have much money left. And money made the world go round. He wrinkled his nose, and she caught the faint mutterings of his young mind, half-formed images of pancakes and bacon.  
  
"Sorry, sweetie," she said, feeling a pang of remorse. "I'm sure we'll find something better come lunchtime, huh?"  
  
"Where're we going, Mommy?" he asked, wiping greasy crumbs from his mouth minutes later.  
  
"Far, far away. To..." She looked at the signs around them. "To Florida." They were in the Southern United States, anyway, and there were so many people in Florida, surely the Lab would have trouble locating them.  
  
"When will we go home?"  
  
Large brown eyes blinked innocently up at her. Her heart broke in a million pieces right then and there. His eyes were so like James'...  
  
"You know the answer, Braddy. Never."  
  
****eight years before****  
  
Every test subject in the Lab who had been injected with SIA were low-grade telepaths. It explained how Rebecca had communicated with James when they'd been high on the drug.  
  
"But each person has...a more dominant power. The files on us are rather disturbing." Rebecca clicked open another computer window. "James Everette Crawford. Your middle name is Everette? Pyrokinetic. It has EVERYTHING about you."  
  
"Pyrokinetic?" He gave her a puzzled look.  
  
"You can light fires."  
  
"And you are...?"  
  
"Clairvoyant."  
  
"Meaning?"  
  
"You really don't know much about psi, do you? In my case, when I touch things," she waved her gloved fingers, "I get weird vibes, I...know things."  
  
"Ah."  
  
"But get this: half the test subjects died, and two are in a coma as we speak."  
  
"How many came through as we did."  
  
"Six, including ourselves, are walking around in relative freedom. But the Lab people are obviously going to pull one of our number in. Andrew Cardigan...he's a bit insane, and they're just now noticing."  
  
"That sucks." James clutched the armrests of the chair he was seated in. He wondered if he could light the candle sitting on the table there if he tried hard enough. Pyrokinesis. "So they won't bother us? We're just allowed to go on with our daily lives? Isn't what they're doing illegal? I could've sworn America was a democracy just a few weeks ago--choices, and all that jazz."  
  
"I don't know what the government has to do with this, but yeah, it does seem to go againt the basic principles of the Constitution. Their control runs deep. And what can we do, when we don't even know what they're planning?" She buried her face in her arms.  
  
A week passed. James Crawford was more stressed than he'd ever been in his life. He had nightmares. White room, needle, match, and a strange crying in the background.  
  
He and Rebecca road to the coastline in silence. James' Buick parked in the sand (though he had no idea how he would get it out again) and they walked the rest of the way to the very shore. He chased her into the salty water, kissed her twice, and accidentally caused his own swim trunks to catch on fire when she said she thought she loved him.  
  
After he frantically put out the fire by dunking beneath the surface, they sat on beach towels and talked.  
  
"We have to learn to control our...powers. I mean, I'm stuck with wearing gloves, I want to have something to show for it. And you. I think your trunks are proof enough," Rebecca said.  
  
"We only know the littlest bit about psi," James pointed out.  
  
"We'll learn," she said stubbornly. 


	4. Florida

~EstE: Florida~  
  
  
  
  
  
****present****  
  
'God, we were foolish back then,' Rebecca thought ruefully, leading Bradley with one hand clasped in his tiny one. The sun was hot and proud on its pedestal, and it glared down on the sole occupants of the small beach. There had been a sign a half-mile back saying, 'No Trespassing,' but Rebecca had ignored it.  
  
"Lookie!" Bradley pointed a skinny finger at a large beach-house. (She was momentarily broken-hearted with the remembrance of his malnutrition. No. She'd dwell on that later.) The beach-house was wooden, beautiful, and locked. If James had been there, he would have broken the lock. 'But...he isn't.' She loosened a hair clip from her long plait of red hair and proceeded to pick the lock.  
  
The interior was even more luxurious than the outside, with electronics, well-stuffed furniture, and plenty of canned food. However, judging by the two inch layer of dust on the floor, no one had been here for a while. 'With my luck, the electricity will be disconnected.'  
  
She was right. Luck was a sly bitch.  
  
"Well, sweetie," she said, hugging Bradley to her briefly, "we can survive without electricity." She found a stack of firewood by the fireplace. She put together a make-shift stove, then quickly and efficiently prepared them a can of Campbell's Soup.  
  
Afterwards, she put Bradley to bed (he was too exhausted to even take a bath) and set about exploring the beach-house.  
  
****eight years before****  
  
"They want us."  
  
Rebecca held herself, unable to control the trembling. James understood-- they'd been lying low for months, and now it was May. Graduation was coming up. They had already begun planning their futures.  
  
Perhaps they had been foolish to stick around after discovering what had been done to them. And now the Lab--Professor B.--wanted them back. They'd both gotten the memo.  
  
"I've studied their files, James. They'll use us for our psi abilities," Rebecca said hotly. "Guinea pigs."  
  
James felt heat engulf him as the rage built inside--but quickly pushed it back. It would do no good to set fire to an innocent bystander.  
  
"We'll run," he said. "They don't expect to see us until this summer. We'll graduate...and we'll run. They can't follow us TOO far, right? We'll move up north."  
  
She was doubtful.  
  
But in due course, they did run.  
  
****present****  
  
Bradley Crawford listened sleepily to his mommy rummaging around outside the guest-bedroom door. Sometimes she cursed, and other times she made a funny choking sound. She made that sound a lot when she thought of daddy.  
  
Bradley missed his daddy. Daddy was shot a year ago by a Bad Man in a gray suit. Bradley guessed that the man hadn't liked his daddy. Bradley didn't like some of the boys at school (when he went to school) but he never shot at them.  
  
Mommy took Bradley and they went FAR away, to here. It was very nice here. But he missed his home and his friends, Billy Garcia (who squirted milk out of his nose) and Frankie Carmichael (the boy who looked like a girl). He also missed his daddy. He didn't like to mention how much he missed daddy to mommy because the last time he had, mommy had screamed at him that daddy wasn't ever coming back. Never ever ever.  
  
He needed a bath. He smelled bad. Like what daddy used to call "shit". Mommy used to say that "shit" is a bad word.  
  
Bradley sometimes had funny visions. Like when he was riding in the car, he could look at certain people and in his head he'd see them crying or hurt or running from something. And these things always came true. Like dreams came true, in Disney World. Mommy said this (the visions, not Disney World) was precognition, whatever that meant.  
  
Right now in his head he saw blood, blood like the liquid that had flowed from daddy's forehead when the Bad Man shot him. Only he saw it on mommy.  
  
He was very scared then, and he huddled beneath the blankets.  
  
****eight years before****  
  
They escaped to New York. James got a job as an architect, as he'd wanted, and Rebecca began teaching High School English. They were sure the Lab wouldn't catch up with them, but all the same, they stayed close.  
  
The first gray-suited men came.  
  
Both were forced to uproot and flea. They went cross-country to California, where they rented an apartment together, "to save on costs".  
  
One night, while hacking, Rebecca found information that was most helpful. (She never realized, even in those last few days proceeding her death, that the information was twisted and had holes in it. Her son would discover this.)  
  
"In Austria, there is a school for "gifted" individuals. Rosenkreuz. It offers protection for psychics, James. Like us. Apparently, upon graduation, many of the psychics go to work under an organization known as EstE. We can...we can go to Rosenkreuz."  
  
They never followed through with that plan. They loved California, and each other, and that Fall they were married.  
  
And then the real trouble began.  
  
****present****  
  
Florida had a humid climate, but Rebecca needed wood to feed the fire to cook meals. Everyday she combed the beach for leftover wood, rotted with time, and driftwood, damp with ocean spray. Though it wasn't the greatest fuel of all time, she made do, as she had done all her life.  
  
She felt she needed a job, knew she did, but was too frightened to go into town to apply for one. 'How can we get to Austria without money?' she wondered hopelessly as the days wore on. 'How?'  
  
****seven years before****  
  
Bradley Crawford was born on a warm, muggy night. He was small but not tiny. Rebecca and James Crawford thought he was the best thing since sliced bread.  
  
They never suspected he might have inherited more than his eyes and hair color from them. There was no outward evidence of his precognition until he was three years of age and could speak. He would warn "Mama" and "Da" against doing such-and-such or going wherever. And his warnings were always right.  
  
Sometimes what he saw was too scary for him to properly communicate. Sometimes he kept to himself what most needed to be told.  
  
****present****  
  
Rebecca was out searching for wood when they found her. She didn't bother pleading for her life--"If you take me with you, I'll go as a corpse," she insisted. They shot her between her eyes, let her blood and brain matter cover the white sand, hauled her body to their van and drove away. They couldn't see the beach-house from their position, and they didn't know that James and Rebecca Crawford had conceived a son.  
  
The Lab men didn't know.  
  
And they drove away. 


End file.
